Saturday Night at The Pub - Sober

Spent last night sharing Mother's Day with the in laws and some family at a beer barn drinking diet ginger beer. Don't get me wrong - I was looking forward to the ribs and seeing some of the relatives, but sheesh, listening to all the drunken babble at the bar was a new experience.

I bought a couple of ginger beers at the bar and the smell was over bearing of alcohol and sweat - plus how everyone's eyes seemed bloodshot and glazed and half shut. I just watched, trying not to stare as they leaned over each other's shoulders shouting above each other, and rocking back and forth from their spots against the tables.

Then an old guy tapped me on the shoulder and told me about his spot on the end of the bar, as though he was part of the furniture. He went on about how the management had moved the bar stools out of the bar area and it was standing room only at the bar service area.

He tapped on the sign "service area, no standing" and the glass partition that had been built around the end of the bar so patrons would not be able to reach over and access the till. "This is where I have sat for the last twenty years," he grinned, tapping his fingernail on the bar, "And they have take away the barstools, put up these fucking signs, almost made it impossible for me to keep my spot here, but I still keep coming back - this is Jim's End, I tell em!"

He was all pleased with himself and I smiled and nodded back to him. It made me think - here's management totally disregarding a regular customer's established position and taking away his identity as a "positional" drinker like on shows like Cheers and others, and this guy still keeps coming back regardless.

What other business could treat a regular client like this, yet still get such compliant, gushing endorsements from the client it has so obviously overlooked? Unless the client was an alcoholic.